“I’ve suspected.”
“Don’t be careful with me right now, Merric. Not about this.”
I set the other boot down and look at her directly. “Yeah. I know. From the first day. His chin, his shoulders, the way he sets his shoulders. He’s mine.”
Her throat works, and her eyes flash. “He’s mine. He’s been mine for seventeen years.”
“I’m not disputing that.” I keep my voice low. This is dangerous territory.
“I raised him myself. No partner, no— I did it myself. Every scraped knee and broken bone and nightmare. Every time his magic erupted, I had to talk him down. Every question about his father that I had to answer without falling apart.” Her voice is steady, but the effort it’s costing her is visible—a tremor at the edges, held in place by sheer will. “I was enough.”
“You were more than enough. He’s extraordinary, Brenna. Whatever he is… that’s because of you.”
“Stop.” The word cracks. Just slightly. Just enough. “Don’t be all gentle and reasonable right now. I can’t… If you’re gentle, I’m going to—”
She stops. Presses her lips together. Looks at the ceiling.
I stand up. Slowly. The way I’ve learned to move around her: no sudden advances, no crowding. I cross the distance between us and stop within arm’s reach.
“He’s my son,” I say. Not a question. Not a demand. Just the truth, spoken aloud for the first time, hanging in the air between us.
“Yes.” The word comes out like it’s been held inside for seventeen years and has finally been allowed to surface. “He’s your son, Merric.”
The bunkhouse is very quiet. The cicadas outside. The creak of the floorboards beneath us. My heartbeat, which I’m fairly sure she can hear.
“I didn’t want it to be this way,” I say. “Brenna. If I could go back to that day—”
“Don’t.”
“I need to say this.”
“Merric—”
“I would have told them to go to hell. Every elder, every councillor, every wolf who thought they had the right to tell me who I could love. I would have ended Frostbourne before I walked away from you. I was young, and I was scared. I made the worst choice of my life, and I have regretted it every single day since.”
Her composure crumbles. Not dramatically, not a collapse. A single crack running through the surface, and underneath it something raw and pressurized that she’s been containing for too long.
“You don’t get to say that.” Her voice is thick. Rough. “You don’t get to stand here and tell me you regret it. I lived the consequences. Iamthe consequences. Every hard mile, every sleepless night, every time Cameron asked me why his daddy didn’t love him enough to stay—”
“He asked that?”
“He was five. He asked that at five, Merric. And I looked my son in the face and told him his father loved him very much—even though his father didn’t know he existed—because what the hell else was I supposed to say?”
The sound that comes out of me isn’t a word. It’s something from the bottom of my chest, a noise my wolf makes when the pain is too big for language.
“I should have come back,” I say. “I should have picked you. I should have—”
“You should have stayed in the first place.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Do you actually know, or is this the guilt talking? Because guilt is cheap, Merric. Guilt doesn’t change diapers at three in the morning. Guilt doesn’t hold a six-year-old through a magic flare that sets the curtains on fire. Guilt doesn’t—”
Her voice breaks, and the sound of it rips through me because Brenna Corvus does not break. She bends, she fights, she walks through fire and comes out the other side with her teeth bared. She does not break.
“Hey.” I reach for her. Not her face, not her hands—her arms, just above the elbows. A firm grip. “Hey. I’m here.”
“That’s the problem.” She’s not crying. Her eyes are bright, and her chin is trembling. She is holding it together through what looks like an act of pure, furious will. “You’re here, and you’re saying the right things. You’re good with him. I don’t know how to be angry at someone who’s doing everything I wanted them to do far too late.”
